Camping Redux

Liz sent me this pics of Declan chilling in the girls tent, and they were just so cute I had to post them. My boy likes to camp.

Camping. No, seriously. I went camping.

My idea of roughing it is a hotel without a bellman, so I'm not entirely sure what possessed me to take Declan camping this weekend, but away we went. I had never been camping before, and neither had he. There was a bunch of other families going so I figured it was a good way to start out- surrounded by people who knew what they were doing.

We went to Lake Ouchita state park in the Ouchita national forest, about an hour and a half away from home.

We went boating and swimming in the lake. Declan appreciated how muddy the swim beach was.

Nellie came with us and was a camping champ- letting the kids "take care" of her, and guarding the campsite from critters. She stayed up all night keeping an eye out! Phoebe stayed home with Shane as I don't 100% trust her off the leash yet, and I thought it might be too much for me to handle on my first time out in the Great Beyond. She would have been all over that muddy lake though. Next time Phoebe!

Declan got to go for his first bike trailer ride- Arno took him along when he took Amelie for a spin around the campgrounds.

Lonnnnnng after the ride was over, Declan stayed in the trailer, waiting and hoping that Arno would come back.

As night fell, the kids all gathered in our tent to tell each other ghost stories.

Or maybe they were just watching the iPad.

Retroblogging: Dinner at Scott and Natalie's

I am retroblogging some pictures from our trip to Vancouver in August as things have been a little en fuego around here.

Flo-rida

It has been a summer of unplanned trips for us- twice to Vancouver and Florida, to Denver, to Seattle, and Las Vegas. We had the Labour Day weekend in front of us, so we opted to round out the summer with one more unplanned trip - to Fort Walton Beach in Florida which is gulf-side, but has been unaffected by the oil spill so far.

This was the view out to the Gulf from the balcony of our last minute condo rental. So beautiful!

The condo had 3 great pools, as well as this little play area for the kidlets. Declan loved it.

He also loves the beach. The day this picture was taken a pod of dolphins came and played for awhile right off shore. Very exciting!

The sand is perfect, the water is perfect, the weather is perfect. I can't wait to go back.

Beach pro washing the sand off.

Waterbaby!

brave waterbaby!

And a tamer of dragons. What can't this boy do?